This Goofy Mac Bug Lets You Freeze a Window Askew While Remaining Functional

A quirky bug in Mac OS X lets you freeze any window half-way through the minimize animation, providing for a completely askew window that retains the intended functionality of that minimized window.

Obviously freezing an animation mid-animation isn’t particularly useful, but it can be fun to use, it looks pretty silly, and maybe it has some hidden purpose that we’re just not aware of. Anyway, freezing the minimize animation is very easy to replicate, here’s how to do it on Mac:

Head to System Preferences and go to the “Dock” settings, and make sure “Genie effect” is selected as the minimize option

Minimize any window (this is most fun with functional windows like text editors or videos that are actively playing) to send it to the Dock by clicking the yellow button

Unminimize the window and hit Command+H quickly while it’s flying out of the Dock

Hitting Command+H (the hide shortcut) in mid-animation is what causes the bug to trigger, and rather than hiding the window it simply freezes the window at that point in the effect sequence.

The “Scaled effect” works as well, but it results in just a miniaturized window which isn’t nearly as much fun as the off kilter results created by the Genie effect, or the hidden “Suck” effect.

Moving the Dock location around on the screen will allow you to warp the window into different shapes and sizes, so play around with Dock orientation and have fun.

Here’s a short video demonstrating the effect being done with a Terminal window:

Stupid Mac trick? Absolutely, but it’s Friday in August, what can you expect? This bug has been around in OS X for a long time, and remains in the latest versions as well.

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